Summer is officially here in New England and it’s muggy as hell. It’s not like it doesn’t happen every year, but it’s just that it’s never pleasant. It’s made it so uncomfortable, in fact, that I’ve had to neglect some of my reading pile. A shocker, I know – that it’s spread past the laziness and lack of sleep. It’s more that the books tend to warp in the heat and I’m better off keeping the hardcovers wrapped tight in their plastic sealants and stacked high on the softcover trade paperbacks – the weight of them all saving their spines.

I am reading some stuff, though, because I can’t help myself sometimes, despite the time, the tone of the temperature.

I’m about half way through the latest HELLBOY collection, “The Crooked Man and Others”.

I highly recommend this book not because it contains the hard-to-find “They That Go Down to the Sea in Ships” by the utterly talent Jason Shaw Alexander or the recent – and first in years – written & drawn Mike Mignola story, “In the Chapel of Moloch”. No, it’s because of the titular story from Mignola and Richard Corben. “The Crooked Man” is the first HB story to creep me out since “The Wolves” .

The story has the basic set up of a young Hellboy in the Appalachian Mountains plus hillbillies and witches and all that expected stuff. It’s all disturbing and usually good for the murky atmosphere but the Crooked Man himself made me shiver despite the heat. I was reading as my wife slept – couldn’t have been later than 11:30 or midnight – like I do every night but Corben’s twisted figure made me aware that I was all alone in the world. It’s only words and pictures but it’s a striking image, a guy who’s irregular enough to be fictional, but peculiar enough to be real all the same time. He’s not a guy I’d be comfortable meeting while running a lonely trail in the woods.

Additionally, I enjoy the HELLBOY mythos and all that stuff but I’m also happy to see these little short stories from his past. It’s nice to check in with HB back before he found out he was The One.

I also finally got around to reading through the first volume of SUPERMAN: NEW KRYPTON, the massive storyline that produced the nearly two years of comics that wrap up with this week’s SUPERMAN #700.

The collection opens with a pair of oneshots by James Robinson – SUPERMAN’S PAL JIMMY OLSEN SPECIAL #1 & ADVENTURE COMICS SPECIAL #1. They sum up most of what I love about Robinson’s writing: the sense of history and scripting. He actually made me not only root for Jimmy Olsen but love the freckled bastard. The scripts have Robinson’s dialogue tics (page 26 and 43) the things that make is work so special to me. He did a great job with The Guardian as well, in ADVENTURE COMICS SPECIAL, which acted as a set up to his SUPERMAN run with Mon-El and the Science Police.

They also have great art, the first by a trio of highly capable artists (Jesus Merino, Leno Carvalho, Steve Scott) and Pere Perez.

Then it moves into the “New Krypton” special which starts with the silent funeral for Jonathan Kent. It would have been nice to include a quick recap that, you know, Brainiac killed him in the previous arc, because I’m only barely familiar with the story and it’s a little vague. This special goes on to set up the whole storyline, with the newly restored, now un-bottled city of Kandor and the 100,000 Kryptonians that it houses. This kicks the uniting of Lex Luthor and General Sam Lane into gear. It’s a double-dose of jealousy, which is nothing short of dangerous for everyone involved.

Pete Woods handles a good deal of the material here, which is great, because he’s probably the definitive Superman artist of this era. (People like to think it is Gary Frank, but it’s not.) Woods illustrated most of the post-INFINITE CRISIS/52 story “Up, Up and Away,” a big part of this collection here and a majority of the WORLD OF NEW KRYPTON series – as well as the upcoming ACTION COMICS run with Paul Cornell. It’s a Superman guy, folks. The work speaks for itself.

Yeah, so I loved this collection. I opted out of reading this arc in lieu of the collected edition. I think it holds up and I’m eager to see the rest of it. I don’t yet know how Kandor got on the other side of the Sun (as seen in the WORLD OF NEW KRYPTON series). I think it’s worth it for the Jimmy Olsen story alone.This month has really flown by. It’s a five Wednesday month but the PREVIEWS catalogue is due out this week. Here’s a look at what’s going up this week:

MAR100280 THE AUTHORITY: THE LOST YEAR BOOK 1 TPBWildstorm/DC Comics$17.99

I’ve sort of warmed up to “The Lost Year” over the last couple of issues. The first few didn’t seem to have a point, but the art’s been great and the alternative realities have been packed with material. Good stuff.APR100923 AVATAR LAST AIRBENDER FILM COMIC TP VOL 01 $7.99

APR100547 THE AVENGERS #2Marvel Comics$3.99

This is definitely a “true” Avengers book but my problem has always been that, well, I hate The Avengers.

I can’t wait for this. Yanick Paquette is a megastar and Pirate Batman is too good to be true. The sample art pages look fantastic. This is going to be a blast.

APR100169 BATMAN: STREETS OF GOTHAM #13DC Comics$3.99

The final installment of MANHUNTER. Which is sad. The ‘Not Sad’ is the start of the sequel to “Heart of Hush”. I wonder what Tommy Elliot is going to do with his new Bruce Wayne face when the real Bruce Wayne comes back?FEB100057 BEASTS OF BURDEN HC $19.99 APR100236 BILLY BATSON AND THE MAGIC OF SHAZAM #17 $2.50 JAN100887 BLACKBEARD LEGEND OF THE PYRATE KING #4 $3.99 MAR100879 BUCK ROGERS #12 $3.50

APR100891 BULLET TO THE HEAD #1Dynamite Entertainment$3.99

I think this is a reprint of a French book. I know it’s Tough Dudes With Guns which is what artist Colin Wilson does well.MAR101068 CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT CHRONICLES LTD ED HC $29.95 MAR101067 CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT CHRONICLES SC $16.95 FEB100180 COVER RUN THE DC COMICS ART OF ADAM HUGHES HC $39.99

I’m mildly interested in this – Judd Winick and often-only cover-artist Sami Basri are the new creative team of POWER GIRL. I never read the first year’s worth of issues, mostly due to my dislike of Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray.JAN100632 POWERS #5 (MR) $3.95 APR100011 PREDATORS #3 (OF 4) $2.99

I really enjoyed the last issue of WILDCATS - more so than the last couple. The plotlines are breaking off and the different kinds of stories are being set up. I think that, with a cast so big, WILDCATS should be a double-sized comic every month – even if that meant different artists.APR100631 WOLVERINE ORIGINS #49 $2.99 APR100632 WOLVERINE WEAPON X #14 $3.99 MAR100252 WORLDS FINEST TP $14.99 APR101068 WWE HEROES #4 $3.99 APR100629 X-FACTOR #206 XSC $2.99 APR100625 X-MEN LEGACY #237 XSC $2.99 APR100659 X-MEN NOIR PREM HC MARK OF CAIN $19.99

APR100685 X-MEN: S.W.O.R.D.: NO TIME TO BREATHE TPBMarvel Comics$15.99

S.W.O.R.D.

ended as we expected – early. It’s a shame, though, since Kieron Gillen and Steve Sanders actually had something cool here. I preordered the trade paperback in case my LCS didn’t get any other copies.APR100205 ZATANNA #2 $2.99Next week: new PREVIEWS column. Grab a catalogue and meet me back here.

Brian Domingos is the Editor-in-Chief at Popimage.com. Questions? Comments? Love Notes? Email him via brian@popimage.com. To submit a comic for review, please email him at the email link. We're always interested to see what people have to offer. And you can follow him on Twitter @bdomingos